AS3, jQuery, Web/Game Dev, & Other Nerdery

Category: Joomla

One of the most frustrating things about Joomla is it’s lack of thorough documentation. Yeah, there’s an API… yeah there’s a Wiki… but it just seems like there are a lot of gaps and holes that don’t necessarily have to exist. Here’s a quick tutorial on how to implement languages in your component in Joomla! 1.5. First off, lets talk about why this tutorial is important. Let’s say you’re creating a component to give site admins a way to easily create a special Links (yes, there’s already one for Joomla, it’s 2am, just go with me on this) section. On the back-end, you’ve got an “Add Link Category” page that takes admins to a nice form that lets them create a category for links in this component. So you’ve got text for “Name:” and “Description:” and maybe even “Category Image:” if they want to use an image with the text. You finish your component and release it, and someone in the Joomla community wants to make a Spanish version of your component. They would have to dig into your source code and basically re-write all of your inline html that you’ve written; essentially necessitating a while new release of your component in an “English version” and “Spanish version.”

Man, I’m all over the place lately. Actionscript 3 projects… PHP Development… what’s next? Crochet you say? Maybe finally master Bocce ball? So, I’ve been working on a new project as of late. In doing a site redesign for an older site of mine, I’ve been using Joomla!Framework to structure and build the new site. I’ve used a number of different PHP frameworks and CMS’s over the years, notably Joomla, Drupal, CakePHP, CodeIgnitor, and WordPress, and I just really, really love Joomla. Maybe thats because I’ve spent so much time ‘under the hood’ in development, but to me, this CMS/Framework just makes sense and speeds up my development on new sites.